


What Could Have Been

by Vexfulfolly



Category: Midnight Texas (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Gen, Headaches, Olivia is mentioned - Freeform, Psychic Abilities, Sick Fic, Vomiting, Whump, a plot that should be followed up on, basically a scene spinoff of what could have been the before credit scene, canon divergent after angels heart, manfred whump, me just being a dick to manny, migraines, okay maybe a bit more than slight, post angels heart, sic fic, slight blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 11:24:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15436002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vexfulfolly/pseuds/Vexfulfolly
Summary: Canon compliant until the final scene of Angel Heart. A plot bunny that I run with.AkaManfred’s pill addiction doesn’t go unnoticed, but something happens and he’s left without a respite for his mind, he reacts in a way no one could have expected.





	What Could Have Been

**Author's Note:**

> This isn’t like,,, anti Creek/ Manfred, I just don’t like how they kinda felt forced together? So at this point in time during the series, I felt like it could be a natural breaking point for them.

 

It didn’t happen over night, but it didn’t take long. It started with little things here and there, like a nudge, or a prodding question. It turned into suggestions and trials, until finally it boiled over to arguments shouting matches. 

 

But last night was where everything fell apart. What once was binding soon became choking, and then altogether nothing. In all honesty, Manfred could hardly remember what they’d said to each other, but he knew it’d hurt. Deeply. In the kind of way that felt uncalled for, yet true all the same— the truth always hurt the worst.

 

From what he could recall, however, merely proved that it was over. He remembered walking in the door to his house and making his way to the bedroom, hoping to see Creek fast asleep. That’s how it usually went with them— he’d come home late, they’d sleep together, and Creek would leave in the morning for her shift at the gas station. They had a system. But it was wrong today. Instead he found her sitting on the bed, a tired, angry expression upon her lips. Before he could even say anything, she spoke first.

 

“I can’t do this anymore Manfred. You promised me you would stop.”

 

His confused expression must’ve shown just how lost he was, because it prompted her to toss what she was holding in her hands his way. He fumbled it for a moment before catching it, turning it and blanching. It was one of his pill bottles— empty.

 

“I figured that if you wouldn’t help yourself, I’d do it for you.”

 

If Creek noticed the tremor run through his hands, she didn’t say anything about it— she just kept waiting for him to respond. With his brain sluggish from the long day, it took him a moment to fully understand what the girl was saying, and when he did,he dropped the bottle. Suddenly broken from her gentle trance, Creek looked concerned. Why did she all of a sudden care? If she cared she wouldn’t have… she wouldn’t have done this.

 

“Manfred—”

 

“—What did you do with them?” He interrupted, his voice cracking slightly. “Did you get rid of all of them?”

 

Taken aback, the girl got to her feet, her mouth hanging open slightly. Obviously this wasn’t the reaction she had anticipated. Steeling herself with a bit more cold confidence, she stood toe to toe with him.

 

“I flushed them,” Creek explained. “Every last one of them. I sweeped the house— I tore the place apart making sure I got them all. Your emergency stash in the RV too.” When Manfred normally would have responded with fire and raw emotion, he felt suddenly cold and empty. It felt like his stomach had evaporated and in turn, he was getting light headed. Or maybe that was just the migraine? At this point, it was anyone’s guess.

 

Silence, apparently, was the wrong answer, so when Manfred’s glazed look and awed featured never changed, Creek felt the need to reach out. She went to place her hand in his trembling palm but the second her skin brushed his, he recoiled. He whipped his hand away from hers and took a step back— as if he were cornered. This time, when Manfred spoke, it was impossibly quiet. “I need those, Creek! How could you– why would you do that?”

 

Creek’s response was instantaneous. “I’m helping you! Maybe if you weren’t always hopped up on pills, you’d be able to see that!” As her voice rose, her emotions did too and by the time she finished speaking, her chest was heaving with repressed sobs and her cheeks glistened with tears. Manfred shouted back, and Creek did after. That was the first thing he remembered from the argument, with the last being his half sobbed, “Get out.” The girl even had the audacity to be surprised when he said it! So through the tears, pain, and betrayal he screamed, “We’re over! Get out!”

 

He didn’t notice how the house shook in its foundations, and how she all but ran. All he knew was that his head was pounding, and that his heart was hurting.

 

There was only one cure for a broken heart, and luckily he had some on hand— sitting in the fridge downstairs. It was funny, Manfred usually remembered everything, from faces, to names, to stories, but for some reason he just couldn’t remember collapsing on the floor. So pulling himself up, he grabbed the six pack from the kitchen, and took the bottle of bourbon he’d stashed in the cupboards back to his room. This was when things really, really got fuzzy. His phone rang a couple of times— Creek— probably calling to make up or something, but he was just so betrayed he declined every one. Until the vibrating and the ringtone got too loud and he drowned it in the kitchen sink.

 

That night was the last time he got any sort of respite from the growing pain in his head— the next few days would be hell.

 

 

The next afternoon, Manfred had not only the world’s worst hangover, but the world’s worst psychic migraine. Forgetting about what had happened the night before he went to his bathroom and opened the mirror, looking for his meds. When he couldn’t find the bottle, it hit him. They were gone. As his pulse pounded behind his eyes he checked the label of every bottle (granted, there were so few left) and started going around the house searching. None in the kitchen, or his bag, he even checked the upstairs bathroom and bedroom only to find nothing. Even though the jarring motion of going up and down the stairs brought tears to his eyes, he went out to the RV and practically tore it apart. Of course when he needed Xylda, she wasn’t there. Go figure.

 

Emerging from the RV, into the sea of ghosts wasn’t that different than before, only that the sun was piercing his retinas, he thought he was going to vomit— and why were the spirits quiet? As he stumbled onto the porch and through the door, he spared a quick glance back outside and was met with hungry yet silent glances.

 

Despite his better judgement, he opened the door and leaned his head out. “Is something… wrong?” He asked. Manfred had learned his grandmother’s superstitions, and silence was one of the most frightening. It was a bad omen— a sort of warning from beyond the veil. The seven or eight ghosts just kept staring at him until from the corner of his eye he saw the smoke. Before Manfred could move, one of them launched towards him and began clawing it’s way down his throat. He could feel his body getting lighter as his hold on it slipped and with his last bit of influence, he fell back into the house. God, was that a mistake.

 

It felt like his soul was being ripped out as the wards on the building began pulling the spirit from his body. The speed and ferocity in which it was torn from him had the door slamming. Manfred would’ve bet everything that the smoke came out of his nose and ears too, because as he laid with his head on the floor, he could feel the warm drops of blood pooling on his skin. In fact, he was pretty sure he’d passed out too. The blood was dry when he woke up, and the sun had long since set.

 

The lack of light was nice on his eyes, but the second he was cognizant enough to move, his head all but exploded in pain. Manfred had to take a moment to writhe before getting up. The ice pick that had settled behind his eye had become a chisel that scraped away at his head with every pulse.

 

Cluster headaches.

 

That’s what the doctors would tell him before prescribing his meds. Some stupid nerve in his head was acting up, and, even though it hurt more than a migraine, it was far less dangerous and lasted much shorter.

 

Moving on autopilot, the boy walked to the bathroom sink (since the kitchen one still held his poor phone) and began to clean his face. Manfred didn’t think it’d take long to clean up since the hardened blood would come off with some scrubbing, but what he didn’t account for was the suddenly too loud noise of running water.

 

It took nearly fifteen minutes to completely rid himself of the blood, and he wondered if his day could get any worse.

 

But oh yes, it almost certainly could.

 

As he was shuffling towards the bedroom, more than excited to take advantage of the unusual silence, there was a knock at the door. It sounded like gunshots. Four, rather polite sounding gunshots.

 

Manfred was torn— he bed was so close, yet he was obligated to answer. It was probably Fiji, likely worried about why he wasn’t answering his phone.

 

He took all the time in the world to get there, and when he did he instinctively stayed well within the house’s bounds. He wasn’t going to make the mistake of getting hijacked a second time today. But despite his best guess, it was Bobo who was waiting outside. He handed Manfred a basket of what smelled to be cookies and gave the boy a sad smile. “Fij heard about what happened and well, she thought some good food might help.”

 

The kindness of the two never ceased to amaze him, and as earnest as Bobo was, it made it that much harder to turn him down. “Look, that’s- that’s really nice, but… you should really give those to Creek. I’ll tell Fiji I loved them, I promise, I’m just not… hungry at the moment,” Manfred said easily. Seeing as this was the best thing to happen to Manfred all day, it was no wonder there was a ghost of a smile on his lips. Which was rather odd, since Bobo’s face was in somewhat of a frown. It was then that the spirits around his doorstep began to get noisy again— it was starting off soft though, luckily. Just some stifled weeping, a few muttered cusses, but they were seemingly waking up. Watching them all start to liven up was strange, seeing them go from intangible statues to wild columns of smoke was something he didn’t often see. It was so mesmerizing that he had started to ignore Bobo.

 

“Manfred!”

 

That snapped him back. Jarring his head and focusing his eyes back on the man, he noticed Bobo’s now concerned expression. Before he could even start to worry, Manfred shooed him away. “I’m fine, I’m fine! If Creek doesn’t want the cookies bring them to Home Cookin’ or something. There’s just a lot of… ghostly activity recently— so don’t even try to convince me to go out. I’m just going to lay low for the next couple of days until it blows over.” Looking less convinced than he did the first time, Bobo just nodded and bid him goodnight.

 

Closing the door with more of a headache than when he opened it, Manfred went to bed.

 

 

 

His night was full of pain, anxiety, and muffled pleas from behind the windows, but he somehow got a refreshing six hours of sleep. While it may not have been much in the grand scheme of things, it was a lot to Manfred. Without his pills, he was going to have to get as much rest as he could if he wanted to keep up his resilience. The weaker he was, the easier it was to get hijacked.

 

Day three went much like day two did, only it hurt a lot more. Manfred didn’t feel the need to get up and stretch, he felt like curling up and sleeping forever. He ended up only crawling out of bed twice: first to use the bathroom, second to get a bottle of water. As he crawled under the covers, he felt his arm itch. The spirits were much louder today than they were yesterday— speaking at full volume, but not quite yelling yet. He just put a pillow over his ears and tried to sleep.

 

The fourth day was much more uncomfortable. While he hadn’t eaten anything solid, he somehow had something to puke. He only left the bed once that day and it took him quite a few nauseating hours before he made it back. When he looked in the mirror, he recoiled at his disgusting presentation— greasy hair, dark circles, puffy eyes. He couldn’t even remember what had made him so upset the other day. Trying to remember just made his head hurt even more, coupled with the voices of the dead. His arm itched constantly. He didn’t answer the door when someone knocked. Manfred couldn’t sleep.

 

The fifth day, found Manfred sick in the bathroom once again. He spent god knows how long peering into the mirror and studying his face. It didn’t look like himself anymore. The eye on the left side of his face was red and irritated, the lid drooping just slightly— it was the side of his head that hurt the most. His ears kept bleeding too, but that was just because it was loud. Everything was screaming; the people outside, the pulse in his veins, the nails on his skin. It was too loud. He wasn’t going to make it back to his bed tonight, the toilet was suddenly looking at lot better. He was going to spend the night retching, as his empty stomach finally had nothing left to offer. Manfred was tired, but he wouldn’t sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I’ve heard enough from all of you! If he’s still depressed, he can say it to my face so I’ll feel better!” Fiji huffed. “And I don’t care what you have to say. I’m worrying. If he’s as fine as you think, then I’ll be back in a jiff.”

 

A chorus of ‘I guess’es and ‘he’s not going to be happy’s followed the petulant witch, but she decidedly didn’t listen. It had been, what, four days since Manfred and Creek split up, and Creek seemed to be doing just fine. In fact, she was doing better, despite Manfred being the one to end it. It just didn’t add up. That and the whole not answering the door thing, Fiji just knew there was something wrong.

 

As she walked down the alley to Manfred’s house, she lugged a bag filled with teas and coffees, assorted candies— and even a pre-made Shepherd’s pie baked just for him. It was disheartening to see that every light in the house was off and it was hardly 8:30. Three gentle knocks announced her presence to the silent house. And silent it stayed, because no matter how hard Fiji strained to hear nothing inside stirred.

 

Three more raps, accompanied by a timid, “Manfred?” Three more knocks, more accurately put: slams. Still nothing. “Manfred? I’m comin’ in!”

 

Dropping her bag of goods on the porch, Fiji pulled out the spare key that Bobo usually carried. Unlocking his door was easy, but coming unwelcome into his home— despite her reason for worry, was harder. To calm herself she took a deep breath and then stomped right in. As she flicked on the nearest light switch, the first floor was flooded with murky light. Looking around felt like she was invading on his privacy, so she did her best to put on blinders. She missed the blood spot on the floor.

 

Fiji knew she’d find him in his room however and knocked twice before entering, but much to her chagrin, she was met with an empty room. The witch was about to leave when she heard the most peculiar sound. It sounded like someone rubbing their nails against fabric, and it was coming from the bathroom. This time, Fiji didn’t knock when she pushed open the door. Sitting in the dark half slumped against the wall, she could just make out the back of Manfred’s head.

 

“There you are!” She tutted. “I’ve been calling for you. And knocking. What’s gotten into you?”

 

When the noise persisted and the man before him didn’t move, her blood ran cold. The room had to have dropped in temperature because she was suddenly wracked with chills. With panic setting in, Fiji fumbled to find the light switch on the wall and clicked it on just as soon as she could. Kneeling down next to his form seemed like a good idea at first, but what she saw wasn’t pretty.

 

The psychic was scratching at his raw arm with bloodied fingers— a dark sheen of red coating his open skin. Unseeing eyes were staring straight ahead, with one pupil utterly blown and the other nothing more than a pinprick. His features looked more sunken in that usual and it looked like there were trails of blood leading from each earlobe to its respective collarbone, as well as from his nose. The most frightening part was that he still wasn’t responding.

 

As gently as her shaking hands could manage, Fiji held each of his wrists. From the pulling on one of them, it was obvious he wanted to keep scratching, but the girl couldn’t watch it a second longer. “Manfred, hey,” she said slowly. “I’m going to get you out of here okay? We’re going to get up now, and make our way to the door. Got it?”

 

If Manfred heard her, he didn’t show it.

 

Fighting back tears, the girl looped and arm under his, and started to help him to his feet. Without his help, Fiji likely would’ve been able to pseudo-carry him back to her place, but he rose to his feet. Manfred was anything but steady, yet he was standing. Slowly, the two of them managed to make it to the threshold of the building, only the have the boy stop in his tracks. He even went as far as to take a step backwards, away from the door, and out of Fiji’s hold. When the witch turned back to him, she finally understood what was happening.

 

His hands were clamped over his ears and his face screwed in pain. Fresh blood dropped from his nose as he doubled over.

 

“Something about ghost energy. Said he didn’t want to leave the house until it was all gone.”

 

As Fiji put the pieces together, she realized what had happened, not only from what Bobo had told her, but from Creek. Creek had been bland in her explanation, but she mentioned that he was just a good-for-nothing junkie who chose his pills over her so she got rid of every last one. Judging by just how much pain Manfred was in, it was likely he was suffering from not only withdrawals, but also whatever malady he was hiding from.

 

“The spirits… ah… give me headaches. The more of them, the more it hurts.”

 

With the veil fraying, ghosts were becoming more plentiful by the minute— and being a medium branded you as a magnet. For days now, Manfred had been tormented and they’d done nothing.

 

As Fiji desperately tried to figure out what to do, the sound of footsteps broke her concentration. Her gaze was drawn towards the alley, and there stood Bobo and Olivia. Concerned glances were openly shared between the three of them before the witch ushered them in. “I think he’s having some sort of psychic episode. With the amount of spirits around, it’s messing with his brain, and because of that, his body is- is, is overcompensating for everything. W-We need to get him back to my place,” she explained.

 

“Whenever there’s more people there’s less ghosts. I’ve never quite figured out why, but it’s just easier to focus here.”

 

Fiji once overheard one of Manfred and Creek’s conversations— so knowing that there was three other people with him, made the witch at least somewhat certain that they could take him outside. Spirits couldn’t hijack him while he was like this, could they? Deciding to burn that bridge if they got to it, Fiji lead the three of them out of the house. Together Bobo and Olivia carried him— one person under either shoulder— as best they could but with his rag doll movements, it wasn’t that hard.

 

The second they made it into Fiji’s house, she had them set him up on the couch, wrap him in blankets, and try to keep him from ripping the rest of his skin off while she worked. The first thing she did was make something to knock him out, and then she started healing. No one was very chatty that night.

 

By the time morning rolled around, Olivia had returned to the pawn shop for the night and Bobo had fallen asleep on the floor. Fiji watched Manfred through bleary eyes as he slept— just watching his chest rise and fall— just making sure he was still alive and didn’t slip through their fingers overnight. Just as she started to nod off, a shift in the boy’s position brought her attention back to the situation at hand. Manfred was groggily looking around the building, a childlike confusion painting his features until his eyes met Fiji’s. A flash of recognition crossed his face before he closed his eyes once again.

 

“It’s quiet.”

 

The comment was nothing more than a croak, but it proved that he was okay, so with the smallest of smiles, Fiji dropped off to sleep.

 

 

Manfred too was beckoned by unconsciousness. Surrounded by the scent of lemons and honey, swaddled in warm blankets, and quiet, the psychic had no problems tilting his head back and slipping back into his dreams.

 

Somehow he knew he was going to be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> I do hope you’ve enjoyed!!! This is my first Midnight fic, and I’m absolutely floored to write more! I hope I wasn’t too ooc on the supporting roles here (Fiji and Bobo). I really wanted to push the boundaries on both Manfred and Creek— hope it did them justice! 
> 
> If you want to let me know how I did, feel free to leave a comment, or request something from me? And if you don’t feel like leaving anything here, catch me on tumblr @ vexfulfun, and on IG @ vexfulfolly
> 
> Thank you for reading, your views, comments, and kudos are appreciated <3


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